Trailers can be used to transport cargo or other items. Many trailers include a mating feature that can engage with and disengage from a corresponding mating feature on a vehicle. For example, trailers for use with a tractor truck typically include a king pin on the underside of the trailer that engages with a corresponding recess or “fifth wheel” on the tractor truck.
To prevent the theft of a trailer when it is not engaged with a vehicle, anti-theft devices may be used. Current anti-theft devices often consist of a metal sleeve mounted directly on the king pin underneath the trailer. The added bulk of the metal sleeve prevents the king pin from fitting into the fifth wheel of a tractor. The sleeve may include a lock on the sleeve that prevents the sleeve from being removed from the king pin.
Current anti-theft devices have several disadvantages, however. Sleeve-style locks can also become dirty, greasy, and difficult to use. Further, the effort required to deploy many current anti-theft devices for trailers can discourage their use, which can leave trailers exposed to theft. For example, sleeve-style locks typically require a user to crawl underneath the trailer to mount the sleeve on the king pin. That can result in truckers having to climb on their hands and knees under trailers in dirt and mud to mount the sleeve lock on the king pin, which in turn can result in on-the-job injuries, disability, and workers' compensation claims.
Further, insurers and customers often require that anti-theft devices be deployed on a trailer to prevent cargo from being stolen. A trucking company may require that its truckers mount anti-theft devices on the trailers they carry as a matter of policy. The trucking company may have someone inspect the trailers carried by its truckers to ensure that its truckers are using an anti-theft device. One drawback of current anti-theft devices, such as a sleeve-style trailer lock mounted underneath a trailer on a king pin, is that it is not immediately visually obvious that the sleeve-style lock has been mounted on the trailer in accordance with company policy. Determining whether a sleeve-style lock has been mounted often requires someone to crawl underneath the trailer to get a line of sight to the king pin.
Those problems and others are not only present in current sleeve-style trailer locks, but among many different kinds of trailers and trailer locks.